If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefoxas your Browser.0930-1500 KENYA TIMENormal Board - The Whole shebangPrompt Board Next day settlementExpert Board All you need re an Individual stock.The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here on the Front Page of the sitehttp://www.rich.co.ke

Jean de Brunhoff released the first Babar book, Histoire de Babar ayear later, and went on to publish four more before his death twoyears later. He left two other Babar stories unfinished. Laurent, then13, completed his father’s proofs and has since illustrated andpublished more than 50 Babar books. At age 92, in 2017, Laurentpublished Babar’s last adventure, Babar’s Guide to Paris. “I had mylife with Babar,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “He made me happy.”Nevertheless, several prominent creators followed Brunhoff’s lead andgranted human characteristics to other fictional and cordialelephants. In 1940, Dr. Seuss’s Horton hatched the egg, and the nextyear Dumbo showed the world “the very things that hold you down aregoing to lift you up.”The search for balance in the human understanding of elephants datesback millenniums. While initially hunted for food and ivory, elephantslater became a “living tank” for ancient militaries. The elephantswere tamed then trained as war machines. However, following theproliferation of artillery combat, elephants in the 18th and 19thcenturies were relegated as beasts of burden, hauling supplies andassisting with building projects.At that time, elephants were hunted for ivory or for sport by big gameEuropean and American hunters. Still big game hunters aided futureconservation efforts in an unlikely way. They were among the first torecognize, and draw concern to, the decline in the elephantpopulation.“It wasn’t seen as a conflict,” Madison says of Roosevelt’s hunting.Many conservationists of the time were also avid hunters. By 1913, theAfrican elephant population, which once held at 26 million had droppedbelow ten million.

“The world that was not mine yesterday now lies spread out at my feet,a splendor. I seem, in the middle of the night, to have returned tothe world of apples, the orchards of Heaven. Perhaps I should take myproblems to a shrink, or perhaps I should enjoy the apples that Ihave, streaked with color like the evening sky.” ― John Cheeverhttp://bit.ly/2ARDG3X

Pres. Trump and first lady Melania Trump, former Pres. Obama and first
lady Michelle Obama, former Pres. Clinton and former Sec. of State
Hillary Clinton, and former Pres. Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn
Carter seated at the Washington National Cathedral for the Bush
funeral

The G20 is an economic club and it has traditionally stuck to thatgroove. And Saudi Arabia has traditionally been represented at G20events by government ministers, usually the oil minister. But thistime around, the Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, who is just aheartbeat away from becoming the king of Saudi Arabia, showed up.By doing so, Riyadh was pushing the envelope. It was insisting thatthe international community had better come to terms with the realitythat MBS is the prince who counts in the House of Saud and shouldlearn to deal with him as their principal interlocutor. No doubt, thisalso was a calculated signal that in Riyadh’s estimation, MBS hasweathered the Jamal Khashoggi storm.The western countries face the dilemma that they have to normalizetheir relationship with MBS if it is to be business as usual withSaudi Arabia. Now, that is a bitter pill to swallow. It is one thingnot to criticize MBS or Saudi Arabia publicly but it is another thingthat under duress, they conduct business with the Crown Prince.So far, the international reprisal against Saudi Arabia over theKhashoggi affair has been rather muted. The US, Germany, France andCanada have imposed targeted sanctions against 17 Saudi nationals overKhashoggi’s killing. But they have neatly sidestepped MBS himself.Evidently, there is an honesty deficit here, considering that Turkeyhad shared the recordings of Khashoggi’s killing with all these 4countries at their specific request. Diplomatic considerations andgeopolitical interests dampen their spirit to go after Saudi Arabia’sjugular veins.Of course, the G20 picture that became viral was the ‘high-five’between MBS and Russian President Vladimir Putin with President Trumpin the backdrop watching with a worried look. The Kremlin spokesmanDmitry Peskov later explained that “good personal relations are thebasis for effective bilateral cooperation.” In fact, Putin and MBSalso had a productive ‘bilateral’ meeting on the sidelines of the G20on December 1.Putin later disclosed that the two countries have agreed to extendinto 2019 their deal to manage the oil market, known as OPEC+. Putintold reporters, “There is no final decision on volumes, but togetherwith Saudi Arabia we will do it. And whatever number there will bebased on this joint decision, we agreed that we will monitor themarket situation and react to it quickly.”Following up on Putin-MBS talks, technical teams are working on thelevel of the cuts necessary and the reference baseline for thereduction. There is growing confidence that OPEC+ will reach anagreement over a cut in production for 2019 when they meet in Viennanext week.Just look at the great irony of it: The western powers dial back theircriticism of Saudi Arabia taking care not to annoy the Saudi CrownPrince, lest vital economic and geo-strategic interests are affected,and yet MBS finalizes with Putin the state of play in the oil marketthrough 2019, which would critically impact the western economies.Implicit in this is also a gentle warning to Trump – that Saudi Arabiais not beholden to him and what is at work is a marriage ofconvenience.There is no question that Trump’s statement on Saudi Arabia two weeksago was an example of strategic clarity although it drew forth a lotof derision and criticism within the US foreign policy elite. In hisdogged pursuit of America-centred Saudi policy, Trump is betting onhis key American audience, which supports his America First project.Simply put, he hopes to sell his Saudi policy directly to the Americanpeople and he is unapologetic about the actual drivers of the USpolicies toward Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. And he explained inhis statement in unsentimental terms the values and purpose of theSaudi alliance.Trump had rounded off his statement by putting American interestsfirst and last: “As President of the United States I intend to ensurethat, in a very dangerous world, America is pursuing its nationalinterests and vigorously contesting countries that wish to do usharm.”But this may turn out to be a big gambit. Trouble is brewing in theCongress where US-Saudi relations are in focus not only on account ofthe Khashoggi killing, but also over the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Lastweek, the US Senate voted to take up a resolution to terminateAmerican support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. It was no doubt awarning shot to Trump.Meanwhile, the unusual closed-door briefing by the CIA Director GinaHaspel to the US senators on Tuesday on the Khashoggi killing may havequeered the pitch for strident demands on the Hill that time has comefor a comprehensive review of the American policy towards SaudiArabia. Quite obviously, the CIA is seething with anger about Trump’sfawning over Saudi Arabia despite the compelling evidence of MBS’complicity in Khashoggi’s murder

Between 431 and 404BC, the two major Greek powers – incumbent powerSparta and the rising Athens – waged war. This is recounted by theAthenian historian Thucydides in The History of the Peloponnesian War:“It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this installed in Spartathat made war inevitable.”

Luckily, the battleground is not yet in military fields, but conflictsare clearly rising in trade, investment and technology, whose impactswill continue to manifest in economic and market terms in the comingyears.For now, the G20 outcome has not fundamentally changed our view on theUS-China economic tussle and its impact. The shifting effect of thetrade war – from a market shock to a growth shock – is the key driverof the economic slowdown expected for China in 2019. The base caseremains that the tariff rate will eventually rise to 25 per cent,covering US$250 billion in Chinese goods, although the odds ofnon-escalation, with levies staying at their current levels, haverisen after last week’s meeting.

Meng Wanzhou, who is the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, hasbeen detained in Vancouver in relation to suspected violations byHuawei of US sanctions placed on Iran.Australia barred @Huawei from providing 5G technology for its wirelessnetworks over the summer and New Zealand followed suit in November. BTannounced it would be removing Huawei-manufactured equipment from its3G and 4G mobile networks.

“To create one contagious movement, you often have to create manysmall movements first.” “Look at the world around you. It may seemlike an immovable, implacable place. It is not, With the slightestpush—in just the right place—it can be tipped.”—Malcolm Gladwell .

Put simply, recent U.S. intelligence assessments confirm what al-Aminhas reported: that the UAE/Saudi war in Yemen is beginning to unravel.Not only are the Emiratis and Saudis mired in a seemingly endlessconflict, their 8,000-plus Sudanese mercenaries are beginning to turnon their Emirati and Saudi officers. This is the result of Saudipenny-pinching (large numbers of Sudanese soldiers are owed months ofbackpay) and the fact that UAE/Saudi commanders regularly andknowingly order the Sudanese units into virtual suicide missionsagainst the Houthi rebels. According to the Middle East Eye, as ofNovember of 2017, upwards of 500 Sudanese soldiers have died in theconflict.

“These guys are cannon fodder for the Saudis, and they know it,”Michael Horton, a Yemen expert and fellow at the Jamestown Foundation,says. The result has been a number of incidents in which Sudanesesoldiers have murdered their UAE or Saudi commanders, what Hortondescribed as “a nasty piece of business.”

Which is to say that, by early 2017, the big winner in the Yemen warseemed to be Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir. But in fact that was not thecase. While offloading the Janjaweed militia to Yemen short-circuitedcomplaints about Bashir’s designs on his neighbors, the mountingSudanese body count in Yemen and persistent complaints from Sudan’smilitary that the UAE and Saudis were scrimping on their pay led towidespread dissatisfaction among Khartoum’s elite. They worried thatBashir had sold himself, and their country, to a bunch of spoiled Gulfprinces.

The curtain in this final act was raised that June, when Bashir’sintelligence services reported that Taha Osman al-Hussein, thedirector of the president’s office (and Bashir’s closest confidante),had been secretly taking payments from the Saudis for exercisinginfluence on Bashir. This included the recommendation, made by Taha,that Bashir cut Sudan’s ties with Qatar—advice that Bashir rejected.Buying Taha did not come cheaply. “The reports on this put the figure,reliably, at between $20 and $25 million dollars,” Abdulrahman al-Amintold me, “which doesn’t count the mansion that Taha was given by theEmiratis on Dubai’s Palms Island.” Worse yet, as Bashir was informed,Taha had secretly taken on Saudi citizenship—which put him under theprotection of Mohammed bin Salman.

The result was that on June 14, 2017, when Bashir turned on Taha andTaha fled to Khartoum’s airport, the Sudanese president couldn’t touchhim. The standoff was resolved by senior Saudi officials, who urgedBashir to allow Taha (whose plane was surrounded by soldiers ofBashir’s personal guard) to fly to Riyadh.

Never sold it, no. But traded it, exchanged it & gave it to certainfavoured apps for certain favoured reasons. Docs released byparliament reveal murky world of data-broking, data "leaking" & datatrading...

The fundamental challenge for Facebook is this: It has representeditself as an ‘’Infomediary’’ Facebook has been hawking thisinformation as if it were an intermediary. This is its ‘’trust gap’’.

The fundamental challenge for Facebook is this: It has representeditself as an ‘’Infomediary’’ An infomediary works as a personal agenton behalf of consumers to help them take control over informationgathered about them. The concept of the infomediary was firstsuggested by John Hagel III in the book Net Worth.However, Facebook has been hawking this information as if it were anintermediary. This is its ‘’trust gap’’. That gap is set to widenfurther. Facebook is facing an existentialist crisis.

“There will be relatively few operations that come out the other side.”With millions of mining rigs being deleveraged from the network, wemust ask one question: where do old rigs end up? @zerohedge In short,it seems like many have ended up on ⁦@eBay⁩According to the data from Blockchain.com, the difficulty to minebitcoin and the hash rate has both declined by over 15%, the secondbiggest drop in Bitcoin's 10-year history. The first plunge occurredin 2011, as the rate plunged 18%.While that is great news for big miners, the consolidation increaseshuge risks for traders and HODL community vested in the network’ssuccess. With fewer mining operations, there is a chance that severalminers could partner together to execute a so-called 51% attack,according to Ryan Selkis, co-founder of crypto researcher Messari. Insuch a maneuver, controlling miners can reverse transactions and stopnew ones from confirming -- potentially making off with billions inother people’s money.According to Bloomberg, most mining operations are profitable aboveBitcoin $4,500. Price has not closed above that level since Nov. 21

BITCOIN’s parabolic price rally had spawned thousands of other cryptocurrencies which were sold on the same grounds as the greatest SouthSea Bubble prospectus: “For carrying on an undertaking of greatadvantage, but nobody to know what it is.” It had become a ‘’Voodoo’’worldAt this point in time, I met folks on these streets who would pull outtheir computer and show me how they were making money every second[look at that they would say and indeed there was a number and it wasticking higher] mining BITCOIN. The recent cryptocurrency marketdecline has resulted in a si- milar drop in mining profitability andforced Chinese operators to sell their mining devices at a loss.Some mining machines are being sold on the second-hand market formerely five per cent of their original value. Others would tell me,I’ve bought Nvidia. Crypto at this point was at peak phenomenon.As I write this BITCOIN is trading at $3,650.00. I think its goingright back to levels below $1,000.00.We have yet to hit peak melt- down. The reason being so many folksespouse the HODL -buy-and- hold strategies in the context of bitcoinand other cryptocurrencies philosophy.Game Kyuubi posted “I AM HODLING,” a drunk, semi-coherent, typo-ladenrant about his poor trading skills and determination to simply holdhis bitcoin from that point on. “I type d that tyitle twice because Iknew it was wrong the first time. Still wrong. w/e,” he wrote inreference to the now-famous misspelling of “holding.” “WHY AM IHOLDING? I’LL TELL YOU WHY,” he continued. “It’s because I’m a badtrader and I KNOW I’M A BAD TRADER. Yeah you good traders can spot thehighs and the lows pit pat piffy wing wong wang just like that andmake a million bucks sure no problem bro.”He concluded that the best cour- se was to hold, since “You only sellin a bear market if you are a good day trader or an illusioned noob.The people inbetween hold.In a zero-sum game such as this, traders canonly take your money if you sell.” He then confessed he’d had somewhiskey and briefly mused about the spelling of whisk(e)y.Selling at todays levels frankly is still a great trade.

Burundi's security services are running secret torture and detentionsites to silence dissent, former government intelligence agents havetold BBC Africa Eye.Using cutting-edge reconstruction techniques, BBC Africa Eye examinesone house in particular, which was filmed in a video posted on socialmedia in 2016.A red liquid, which looked like blood, was seen pouring from itsgutter. We ask if Burundi's repression of opponents has now goneunderground?The government has always denied any human rights violations, anddeclined to comment for this report.A BBC Africa Eye investigation - produced and directed by CharlotteAttwood and Maud Jullien

As the sun comes up, the white stone on the Holy Trinity Cathedral turns golden.

The church, in Ethiopia's capital, is intimately tied to the country'shistory. Many national heroes are buried in its gardens. The throne oflast emperor, Haile Selassie, is still right next to the altar, andhis and the empress's remains are said to be buried here.Ethiopians come before dawn to pray. Adanech Woldermariam, who is inher 70s, stands outside and sets her forehead against one of thecathedral's stone walls. She looks up, her face framed by a white,cotton headscarf, and she begins to weep.She is reminded of a brutal border conflict between Ethiopia andEritrea in the late 1990s that killed tens of thousands and eventuallyled to a two-decade cold war."When the war against Eritrea began," she says, "I saw friendsdeported, their homes, their belongings, taken away forceful"One of the things we were struggling for was freedom from fear, sonow we don't know what to do with it," Hailu says.

There is evidence that real estate markets are stalling in Asia,Australia, Europe, and the US, with new evidence suggesting theslowdown has infected Africa.The housing market in Kenya has been experiencing a year-long markettopping process with a rise in non-performing loans (NPLs) andoversupply fears.NPLs in the sector jumped by Sh6.1 billion ($59,406,251), or 15.8% inApril-June to Sh44.4 billion ($428,502,229) compared to the previousquarter as real estate developers outpaced manufacturers (11.7%) andtraders (7.3%) in the growth of default on loans, according to a newCentral Bank of Kenya’s (CBK’s) quarterly report.CBK’s report shows "11.3% of the Sh392.7 billion ($3,824,819,888)gross loans extended to investors in land and houses by commercialbanks over the years were not being serviced as at the end of June,"said Bussiness Daily Africa.“The real estate sector registered the highest increase in NPLs bySh6.1 billion ($59,406,251) due to slow uptake of housing units,” theCBK said in the report.Real estate has been one of Kenya’s fastest growing sectors in thelast decade, with returns outpacing the Nairobi Securities Exchangeindex and government bonds.The Kenyan property market has, like other property markets around theworld, suddenly hit a brick wall. The Kenya Bankers Association (KBA)notes in a separate report, growth returns for property developersnosedived in the last quarter of 2017 when housing prices declined by4% compared to 10% in the same period for 2016 - due to soaringinventory.“A combination falling growth rates in rental income and sellingprices signals low demand for properties, perhaps explained by reducedpurchasing power for properties,” according to a financial sectorstability report published by the CBK early September.Average rental prices suffered a steep decline from December 2016 andhad remained in negative territory since May 2017, the reportindicated.The weakening property market has triggered financial trouble formortgage financier HF Group, which saw a Sh332 million ($3,136,215)net loss in nine months ended September, weighed down by NPL spikes in2018.“The situation reflects subdued demand on the back of continuedinvestments in the housing market, which remained skewed in favor ofthe middle- and high-income bracket,” Jared Osoro, the director ofresearch and policy at KBA, said.This is just more evidence that the global housing market isunraveling in one synchronized fashion on almost every continent. Theglobal housing downturn is likely to get much in 2019.

Chairman Charles Iyaya says the process of identifying a suitableinvestor will commence immediately by putting up an Expressions ofInterest (EOI) as the first stage towards privatisation.“CBKL is implementing a balance sheet reorganisation strategy as aprecursor to the implementation of a future privatisation strategy”,said Mr Iyaya. Redeemable preference shares can be bought back at theoption of a company either at a fixed rate on a specified date or overa certain period of time.